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Vaccine Success Holds Hope For End To Deadly Scourge Of Ebola

Vaccine Success Holds Hope For End To Deadly Scourge Of Ebola

By Kate Kelland and Tom Miles

LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) — The world is on the verge of being able to protect humans against Ebola, the World Health Organization said on Friday, as a trial in Guinea found a vaccine to have been 100 percent effective.

Initial results from the trial, which tested Merck (MRK.N) and NewLink Genetics’ (NLNK.O) VSV-ZEBOV vaccine on some 4,000 people who had been in close contact with a confirmed Ebola case, showed complete protection after 10 days.

The results were described as “remarkable” and “game changing” by global health specialists.

“We believe that the world is on the verge of an efficacious Ebola vaccine,” WHO vaccine expert Marie Paule Kieny told reporters in a briefing from Geneva.

The vaccine could now be used to help end the worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 11,200 people in West Africa since it began in December 2013.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the results, published online in the medical journal The Lancet, would “change the management of the current Ebola outbreak and future outbreaks.”

The Gavi Alliance, which buys vaccines in bulk for poor countries who struggle to afford them, immediately said it would back an Ebola shot once it is approved.

“These communities need an effective vaccine sooner rather than later,” Gavi’s chief executive Seth Berkley said. “We need to be ready to act wherever the virus is a threat.”

This and other vaccine trials were fast-tracked with huge international effort as researchers raced to test potential therapies and vaccines while the virus was still circulating.

“It was a race against time and the trial had to be implemented under the most challenging circumstances,” said John-Arne Røttingen of Norway’s Institute of Public Health, chair of the trial’s steering group.

“Ring Vaccination”

The Guinea trial began on March 23 to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of a single dose of VSV-ZEBOV using a so-called “ring vaccination” strategy, where close contacts of a person diagnosed with Ebola are immunized — either immediately, or at a later date.

As data began to emerge showing the very high protection rates in those vaccinated immediately, however, researchers decided on July 26 that they would no longer use the “delayed” strategy, since it was becoming clear that making people wait involved unethical and unnecessary risk.

The trial is now being continued, with all participants receiving the vaccine immediately, and will be extended to include 13- to 17-year-olds and possibly also 6- to 12-year-old children, the WHO said.

Jeremy Farrar, a leading infectious disease specialist and director of the Wellcome Trust, said the trial “dared to use a highly innovative and pragmatic design, which allowed the team in Guinea to assess this vaccine in the middle of an epidemic.”

“Our hope is that this vaccine will now help bring this epidemic to an end and be available for the inevitable future Ebola epidemics,” his statement said.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has led the fight against Ebola in West Africa, called for VSV-ZEBOV to be rolled out to the other centers of the outbreak, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it says it could break chains of transmission and protect front-line health workers.

VSV-ZEBOV was originally developed by Canada’s public health agency before being licensed to NewLink Genetics, which then signed a deal handing Merck the responsibility to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute it.

The success of the Guinea trial is a big relief for researchers, many of whom feared a sharp decline in cases this year would scupper their hopes of proving a vaccine could work.

Another major trial in Liberia, which had aimed to recruit some 28,000 subjects, had to stop enrolling after only reaching its mid-stage target of 1,500 participants. Plans for testing in Sierra Leone were also scaled back. That left the study in Guinea, where Ebola is still infecting new victims, as the only real hope for demonstrating the efficacy of a vaccine.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Ben Hirschler in London; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Photo: A member of the French Red Cross disinfects the area around a motionless person suspected of carrying the Ebola virus as a crowd gathers in Forecariah, Guinea, January 30, 2015. REUTERS/Misha Hussain 

Syrians Tune Up For Elections; Assad Deemed likely To Run

Syrians Tune Up For Elections; Assad Deemed likely To Run

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times

BEIRUT — Syrian lawmakers Thursday approved revisions to the nation’s electoral law amid mounting indications that President Bashar Assad plans to run for a new, seven-year term.

Assad, whose current mandate ends in July, has frequently hinted that he would seek re-election under the terms of a new constitution approved in 2012. The Syrian parliament has been modifying the nation’s election law in accordance with the new constitution, though no date has yet been set for elections.

Representatives of the opposition that seeks to oust Assad from office have said repeatedly that any election held while the war in Syria was still raging would be a sham — especially if Assad was on the ballot.

The new constitution allows for multiple candidates and political parties. But critics say the ongoing conflict and Assad’s tight hold on the security services and government agencies would ensure his re-election.

In New York, Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League envoy for Syria, voiced fears Thursday that the planned elections would likely jeopardize the so-called Geneva peace process.

“If there is an election, then my suspicion is that the opposition … will probably not be interested in talking to the government,” Brahimi, chief mediator in the Geneva talks, told reporters in New York.

Two rounds of negotiations this year between Syrian government officials and a U.S.-backed, exile opposition bloc have failed to achieve much, the U.N. mediator acknowledged. But Brahimi said he was still hopeful that a third round could be “more productive.” No date has been set for a resumption of talks.

A major goal of the Geneva negotiations is to name a transitional government that would lead Syria until a new, democratic government could be elected. The opposition argues that Assad cannot be part of any transitional administration, a position rejected by Syrian negotiators.

While Assad has not formally committed to running for re-election, various Syrian government officials have indicated that he will likely seek a third term.

“President Assad is the real guarantee for the security and stability of Syria,” Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said Thursday in an interview with China’s Xinhua news agency.

Assad was first elected in 2000 in unopposed balloting after the death of his father, ex-President Hafez Assad. He was re-elected in 2007, receiving more than 97 percent of the vote, according to official tallies.

This week marks the third anniversary of the Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011 with street protests that triggered a government crackdown. The war has left more than 100,000 dead, reduced many neighborhoods and towns to rubble, and resulted in more than 2 million refugees fleeing Syria.

AFP Photo

Co-Pilot Of Ethiopian Airliner Hijacks His Own Plane

Co-Pilot Of Ethiopian Airliner Hijacks His Own Plane

GENEVA — A co-pilot of Ethiopian Airlines hijacked his own plane with some 200 people on board and diverted it to Geneva on Monday, as the Swiss air force remained on the ground due to budget constrictions.

When flight number ET 702 landed at Geneva airport instead of its planned destination at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the 31-year-old suspect was arrested, leaving all passengers unharmed.

The man said his motivation for the hijacking was to seek asylum in Switzerland.

The Boeing 767 left its predetermined path shortly after departing from Addis Ababa at around midnight.

Italy scrambled fighter jets, the Italian air force said in a statement, adding that French air force jets escorted the airliner across the Alps to Geneva, which lies near the French-Swiss border. The French air force has the right to fly over Swiss territory but cannot shoot down planes there.

Switzerland did not deploy its own air force because the incident occurred out of office hours — 8 a.m. to noon and from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. — which it is restricted to because of budget constraints, air force spokesman Laurent Savary told the Swiss news agency sda.

The Swiss defense ministry said it plans to extend its service to round-the-clock standby from 2020.

The co-pilot apparently took advantage of a brief absence of the main pilot, said Eric Grandjean, spokesman of the Geneva police.

“When the captain went to the toilet, he locked himself in the cockpit,” he said.

Shortly after landing, the co-pilot climbed out of the aircraft through a cockpit window and surrendered to police.

He said that he was not safe in Ethiopia and wanted to be granted asylum in Switzerland, according to Grandjean.

“This man’s chances [for asylum] are not very high,” said Pierre Maudet, the security councillor of the government of the canton of Geneva.

The prosecutor’s office in Geneva said that the co-pilot faces up to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and violating aviation security.

In Addis Ababa, Information Minister Redwan Hussein apologized to the flight’s passengers, which included around 139 Italians, 11 U.S. citizens, four French people and two Germans.

AFP Photo/Mario Goldman

Jimmy Carter Calls For Syria Elections, Peacekeepers

Washington (AFP) – Former president Jimmy Carter on Monday proposed three principles as a basis for Syria peace talks in Geneva: free elections, respect for their results and the deployment of peacekeepers.

Syria peace talks are set to begin in Switzerland on January 22, though the full list of participants is still unclear.

The talks have gone nowhere up to now because each belligerent “has been allowed to define the preconditions for negotiations,” Carter, who won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

While President Bashar al-Assad considers his opponents terrorists and will not talk until they lay down their arms, the fractured opposition is demanding a full regime change, giving Assad no incentive to bargain.

“No one can win this war,” argued Carter in an article co-written with American University professor Robert Pastor. “It is clear that the parties think they cannot afford to lose because they fear annihilation and this explains why the war will keep going unless the international community imposes a legitimate alternative.”

UN envoys Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi “have not been permitted to use their negotiating skills because the principal actors insist on preconditions of victory rather than mutual accommodation essential to bringing the war to an end,” argued the authors.

“These preconditions aim to win an unwinnable war rather than to forge an imperfect peace,” they added.

Carter and Pastor propose basing the Geneva talks on letting the Syrian people decide on their future government in a free election closely monitored by international observers; an assurance that the victors will respect sectarian and minority groups; and the deployment of “a robust peacekeeping force” to make sure those goals are achieved.

Russia and the United States would need to agree to this approach, Iran “and other regional powers” would have to stop supporting their proxies, and the United Nations would have to make peace in Syria “a top priority.”

Unless these “difficult steps” are taken, Carter and Pastor warned, “the war may very well go on for another decade and likely create a wider circle of destruction and death.”

Carter was U.S. president from 1977 to 1981, and his Atlanta-based Carter Center focuses on human rights and democracy around the world. Pastor, who served on the National Security Council under Carter, is the senior Carter Center conflict resolution advisor.